The more well known you are, the less control one has over the narrative. That’s why those who try to “leak” things to the media or try to manipulate the media narrative are playing with fire.  Most situations situations are fairly boring. Boring doesn’t generate page views. As a result, there is a tendency to spice those headlines up.

Brad: The Narrative

To use myself as an example, here are some facts vs. narratives I’ve read.

The realities are, naturally, far more nuanced than what is presented. 

For example, I support gay marriage, I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-progressive taxation, I live in a net 0 emissions home (solar and geothermal), I drive a Chevy Volt that is powered via my Solar Array, the environment at Stardock is basically a nerd paradise with virtually no turn-over…

…And yet, I’m for small government, generally prefer local control, adamantly oppose attempts by others to force behavior changes (so I’m sympathetic to Chick-fil-A even though I oppose their views), dislike most welfare programs (I grew up poor so I knew plenty of people who were abusing the system), and am a AGW skeptic (even though I own a gold certified green home).

But complexity doesn’t fit narratives. Narratives are designed to build someone up and then tear them down and repeat.  

There’s probably a formula for the amount of page views that would work similar to how voltage works: Page views = Awareness * (Existing Perception – New Perception).  A villain doing something good or a saint doing something bad = dynamite. Would almost make a good game…

People: The Narrative

Sometimes the narrative can become so overwhelming that it’s hard to come back from.  This is something that I think is pretty tragic.  The Daikatana ads “John Romero is going to make you his bitch” was 15 years ago but created such a strong narrative that one can only imagine the impact that had on his career – unfairly I think.

Al Gore had to deal with the “I invented the Internet” which was a very unfair narrative but one that probably (almost certainly) cost him the election in 2000 (it wouldn’t take much). 

These kinds of sound bites are easy to make and difficult to extinguish when they get off into the wild.

What we can do about it

The best thing we can do is try to amplify our own critical thinking. Be aware of the motivations of the media. The people who work there are usually very good people with a lot of integrity. But at the same time, it is a business that lives and dies on page views. Be wary of what you read, particularly the headline part. People are complex creatures, don’t try to pigeon hole someone into a stereo type.

If I knew then what I know now…

Recently on my favorite non-Stardock site, Quarter to Three we celebrated its 10 year anniversary.  10 years ago was before Galactic Civilizations (for Windows), Sins of a Solar Empire, ObjectDock, Fences, Tiles, Demigod, etc.

So what was my biggest internet activity 10 years ago and before? Moderating our forums.  I also was a moderator of Neowin.net’s forums when it started out.

And let me tell you, nothing creates long-term animosity faster than having to enforce forum rules.  Now, if I had known back then that my name would come up in the media on a regular basis, I would have avoided being a moderator like the plague because you can always count on some banned or moderated person to come out of the woodwork to attest to your douchery in comments on other sites.

So do we have any current or former online community moderators reading this? Share your stories with the community in the comments. Being a moderator is a thankless job but so crucial to keeping the overall online community from becoming toxic.

Freshly installed over my Windows 7 system.  Normally I would do a full rebuild but most people who are upgrading aren’t going to do that.

Remembering the experience formerly known as Metro:

First Impressions

A lot of tools are now very difficult to find.  I can’t find the event viewer. Typing it in the search area brings up nothing.  In fact, uninstalling things is actually quite a pain because now you have to first go to control panel and then the add/remove programs (you can’t just search for control panel applets in Windows 8).

Where’s the registry editor?

The right-click menu hangs on the desktop every time I do it.  I’m trying to look into why that might be. I’ll probably go to the registry and get rid of the extra crap….which…I can’t because the registry editor seems to be gone (i.e. I can’t type registry and bring up the registry editor)…

My password…

Windows 8 changed my desktop logon password to my Live ID password without asking.

MSConfig

MSConfig is still easily accessible. From that, I was able to get to the registry editor and go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Directory \ Background \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers to remove legacy shell handlers.

Backgrounds

I like the new desktop backgrounds. Though, they were a bit skimpy on the quantity of them.

The Search

Nothing comes up if you type reged but if you type out the entire word, regedit, it will show up.  This strikes me as a significant back step.

The Store…

I’m running at 2560 x 1440.

Amazing apps.

Ok, I’m going to download and use Wikipedia.

Feel free to tell me how stupid I am.  I cannot figure out how to search…

…

Ok, I figured it out. I have to move my mouse to the top right to bring up the charms bar, then I move the mouse down to the search. Mind you, because I have multiple monitors, this is a pain in the ass. It is really too much for the app to have the search field displayed without having to make multiple clicks?

The Shell

YMMV but the new shell strikes me as a step back.

They’ve brought back, by default, the menubar. And there’s no obvious way to make it go away. There’s a bit of sloppiness here (two menu items called Manage? I know they relate to their corresponding tools action item but still).  It’s not a biggie, just would like an obvious way to get rid of that menu bar entirely.

Performance

I can’t put my finger on it but it feels sluggish. Launching things is noticeably faster. It’s snappier when opening windows. But when I’m typing or interacting with apps I’m used to interacting day in and day out, they feel sluggish (even typing this blog in, I’m feeling a slight delay between the key press and the letter appearing). That is probably something specific to my machine or the fact I didn’t install on a clean machine so take that with a grain of salt.

Some nice things

One very nice feature they threw in for multiple monitor users is that each monitor essentially acts as its own quasi-independent display.  The jury on usability remains out on it but it’s got promise.

Some quick conclusions

The desktop experience of Windows 8 is as about as good as Windows 7.  That said, I can’t really say users gain anything upgrading to Windows 8 from Windows 7.

My single biggest gripe, and it’s kind of a show-stopper, is “Metro”.  I like tablets. I have several. I plan to get Surface. I have a Lenovo tablet on order. But trying to combine the two experiences together was a mistake and it’s going to cost them. I can’t imagine an enterprise customer upgrading to this. 

Users who like to have the latest/greatest will be at a cross-roads here.  If you have multiple monitors, the experience kind of sucks overall because – and remember this carefully – the entire new user metaphor for Windows 8 is premised around moving the mouse to screen edges.  That is how you’re supposed to navigate the Windows 8 ecosystem.

I’m also not sure what we’re supposed to make out of Metro (Windows 8 UI) style apps. They’re clearly designed for tablets running at around 150dpi at lower resolution.  I’m not sure what a traditional PC user is supposed to do with these apps. They’re not useful – so far.  They’d be fine on a tablet but on a desktop.

There is also a lack of polish in the Metro apps. They feel rushed to me.  Take the weather app. Look closely at it. Does this compete well?  Some of the images have masking problems (where the image was originally on a different colored background). Compare this app to what you see on iOS or Android even.

Overall

Overall, if I got Windows 8 on a new machine, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It’s not a bad OS. It’s just a significant step down from Windows 7.  Coming from say Windows XP or Vista, it’s a step up.

I would really like to see Microsoft put some effort into updating Windows 8 to be less schizophrenic.  If I’m installing it on a regular PC, let me use it as such.  Don’t force me to use my mouse as if it’s a surrogate set of fingers.

Updates and corrections

(I’ll be adding to this as I learn more)

One thing that I learned (and I don’t like) is that when you start typing in the search filed, it categorizes them for you. I don’t like this. That’s why I couldn’t find add/remove programs is because apps was selected. I have to manually select settings and look in there. The fix for this would be to have an “all” category that is at the top.

I also really don’t like that I type my search on the right of the screen and the results show up on the left. In Windows 7, you just start typing and the item shows up almost immediately above it.

I used to have more time to blog. Then I had kids.  Here’s a random stream of consciousness.

• Wish I had something handy to clean my keyboard. I love these old Dell keyboards but it might be time to get a new one.
• Seen a lot of articles about lawsuits lately. It’s a shame people don’t read the actual filings and instead focus on the sensational, misleading, headline.
• Speaking of lawsuits, if you operate an IP-based company, lawsuits are daily life unfortunately. IP lawsuits (sometimes referred to as “patent trolls”) don’t just hit the big guys.
• Forum Gamification. Need to write about that.
• Excited about Fallen Enchantress. It really is looking good.
• Wish Start8 would hurry up and get done. I have been groveling to get them to get me a private beta build.
• The CEO is the one ultimately responsible for the failure of a product.
• When a product is successful, the CEO’s role was creating the leadership and environment for that success.
• I got a pet turtle when I was 15.  While I was up north last week, he got out of his outdoor terrarium. I’d had him for 26 years. Hopefully he’s living it up in the woods behind the house. I hope.
• I suspect neither Obama nor Romney are anything like how they are portrayed.
• The more public a figure you are, the less control you have over your public perception.
• The public perception of people is rarely remotely similar to what the person is like.
• Google never forgets.
• The software group may actually lose this year to the games group for generating revenue.
• That’s mainly because of Sins rebellion combined with enterprise software purchases in a bit of a hiatus during the Windows 8 release.
• Company morale is very high. I don’t think anyone’s left the company this year (either voluntarily or involuntarily).
• My dog, Bailey, comes to work with me now.
• Steam has an amazing self-serve uploading system. IT wants all games placed on it but that would mean requiring Steam for our games which I think would cause a minor riot.  That said, all things being equal, I’d prefer to go that route.
• So much email back log.

While the first impressions are still fresh, please go here:

https://www.elementalgame.com/journals

and vote on what you think of Beta 4.

Thanks!

For those of you who have an MSDN subscription, Windows 8 (the RTM build) is now available.  Have you tried it? If so, what’s the verdict?

I’ll have my thoughts later this week.

I’ve received a number of inquiries today regarding the lawsuit Stardock filed against its former Marketing Manager, Alexandra Miseta in federal court. Unfortunately, our policy is to not comment on ongoing litigation.

Someone chose to publicly post the filing (which you can see here).  I presume they did so to capitalize on their marketing knowledge to create a false narrative of this person being unjustly picked on. In twenty years of being in business, this is the first time we have ever filed a lawsuit. We take these matters very seriously.

Whatever the motive they had for posting the filing, they succeeded in getting coverage that we are alleging that our former marketing manager, Alexandra Miseta, quit our company without notice, 3 weeks prior to the largest product launch in our company history and on her way out destroyed/took important marketing assets (along with a number of other things). These assets then had to be recreated at the last minute by those most familiar with the title (the development team) which took them off, during crunch time, from doing the final QA work on the title which had a significant impact on the quality of the release.

None of this conflicts with my or Stardock's previous public statements regarding ultimate "blame" or responsibility for a product's failure. As the CEO, the buck ultimately stops with me. However, that does not excuse malicious actions of individuals.

The Ultimate Edition of Galactic Civilizations I is now available on Steam!

Check it out: http://store.steampowered.com/app/214150/

If you don’t already have The Political Machine 2012, then don’t get it for yourself. Think of the children.  I’ve been campaigning across this great land of ours telling anyone who will listen about the great issues of our times:

1. ATM fees (the devil)

2. Reality TV shows (too many)

3. And tax cuts for me. (and only me)

If you’re into modding, you can make any issues you want and have them be as important or trivial as you’d like.  In a recent update, we added Romney’s tax returns, Chick-fil-a and “You didn’t build that”.   But there’s nothing stopping players from going in and doing their own.

It’s tough to go on The O’Malley Factor. But, as you know, I am a hero. Courage is my middle name.

Me and my close, personal, friend, Barak Obama.

California goes Republican? Not likely.

For some reason, Florida’s top issue is social security.

I am in favor of good things and I oppose bad things. Tiny little flags for all.

There are a few other updates in the works for the game between now and election to help keep things hopping and up to date.  In the meantime, if you manage to beat the AI I wrote, then hop online for some multiplayer action.

Our story so far…

Many many years ago while developing the universe for Galactic Civilizations we started working on a fantasy world. This world became known as Elemental.  The plan was to create a trilogy of games:

• Elemental: War of Magic plus 2 expansion packs (2010, 2011, 2012)
• Elemental: Fallen Enchantress plus 2 expansions (2013 originally, 2014, 2015)

and

• Elemental: (not announced) plus 2 expansions (the future if FE is successful).

War of Magic was Stardock’s first attempt at a land-based strategy game. It didn’t end well. But there was a silver lining, we learned a lot and rather than try to patch/enhance War of Magic with 2 expansions, we just moved directly on to doing a new game in the Elemental universe – Fallen Enchantress.

Here are some screenshots of War of Magic:

And below is Fallen Enchantress with the most similar screenshots I can make to use as a comparison:

We have tried where possible to keep with the artistic flavor and spirit of War of Magic even though the games are radically different. 

People on various forums always ask me if they should buy War of Magic.  I tend to say no since Fallen Enchantress really is superior in every respect and getting War of Magic won’t really give you a leg up in Fallen Enchantress because the game mechanics are so different.

But for those of you who do have War of Magic, you might find it interesting to load it up and play it a bit before Beta 4 of Fallen Enchantress comes out this week so that you can get an idea of just how different it is.  It just goes to show that when you’re making a fantasy game, there are a lot of different design directions you can go even if it’s in the same world.